The Concept Of Empowerment Essay

Custom StudentMr.
TeacherENG
1001-04
14 February 2017

The Concept Of Empowerment

Empowerment is the giving one power, to act in specific way or authority to make some decisions in one’s work or one’s usual life. Empowerment can be in many forms such as worker empowerment, women empowerment and youth empowerment. Empowerment always aims at achieving specific goals to both the empowered and the empowering party. The concept of empowerment took centre stage in the world in the late 80’s and 90’s and it always aims at attaining best results in either politics or other social issues.

Women empowerment is perceived as giving women powers to acquire and own properties and be able to participate in the political decisions of their country. Employee empowerment is the giving of employees’ authority and responsibilities relating to decision making in their work places. The decision making can be either in customer service, acquisition of a product, modification of production process or even expansion of operations of the business. Employees’ empowerment can not succeed if the employee is not prepared to take up responsibilities.

Employment empowerment can then be both beneficial to the manager and individual employees in many ways. First, when managers introduce change to the organization, little resistance is received; unlike in cases where the employees are not involved in decision making, this means that the cost of managing change is reduced. Secondly, there will harmony between the managers and workers as they will view each other as equals; this is very important as the major problem in management of any firm is conflict between managers and workers.

Thirdly, employees will be satisfied with their work and the thought of separation will not come to their mind thus reducing the cost of employee turn over. Fourthly, supervisors costs will be eliminated us the company will need fewer supervisors the already motivated employees. The empowerment of worker will encourage them to work as a team and difficult issues will discuss with colleagues and seniors easily and this will foster competence and exchange of knowledge.

As employees discuss among themselves other may opt to go back to class for further education, others will choose continues professional training and development as means being able to make right decisions. This will reduce the cost of training and development of employees. The employees will always be motivated with this empowerment as they will be able to create their own goals and their contributions will visible. More so, worker empowerment may also be beneficial to workers in many ways.

First, employees are able to learn new ideas and will have an opportunity to learn new things enhancing the career progression. Secondly, employee is able to mingle with others thus increasing social cohesiveness. Workers empowerment can come with very many problems to both the organization that is the manager and the workers if not properly exercised. The disadvantages associated with employee empowerment can be; first, some employees may not be well articulated in their business decisions either by their level of education or through nature thus making un business like decisions.

Secondly, un health competition may arise between employees or teams of workers which may cause loses and require managers to start using conflict resolution techniques. Some decision that may make by employees may be based on personalities rather than logics. Fourthly, there may be misuse of powers by employees which result into loses of profits or loose of goodwill. At times employees may view empowerment as a burden especially those without abilities to bear great responsibilities and some may opt to leave because of fear. Others may not want to work as they will be interested in individual career growth.

The organization will need to incur an extra cost in training and developing of managers and employees. Some manager may not be willing to share information with is juniors feeling threatened. In order worker empowerment to be successful managers should be know ways of motivating employees way-out affecting the organization strategic goals. Therefore before empowering employees, managers should ensure there are good relations between management and workers. Secondly, workers should be seen to have trust in their work or workplace, if they view their workplace with suspicion empowerment wont work.

Thirdly, the work it self should not be a burden to employees home life. Employment encouragement is necessary through recognition and appreciation for those willing to take-up extra responsibilities and authority; in that way they will be willing to bring new ideas to productivity, take new challenges, have self –esteem and even have confident in the company managers. Managers should know that s happy employee will mean successful companies thus recognize behavior or good work at the right time.